Innisidgen Lower & Upper Burial Chambers

Visitor Guide

The Innisidgen Burial Chambers are best reached along the coast path on the north-eastern side of St Mary's, on foot or by bicycle rather than by any form of vehicle. The path here forms part of a longer and very rewarding stretch of St Mary's coastline, with the Upper and Lower chambers only a few hundred feet apart, making it easy to take in both within a short stop.

At the Upper Chamber, visitors can clearly make out the surviving kerb, entrance passage and capstones that make this one of the best-preserved entrance graves on the islands, while the more ruined Lower Chamber a short walk away offers an instructive contrast, showing how much can be lost from a monument of this age and construction over the intervening millennia. The setting throughout is superb, with the open sea visible from much of the path and few other visitors likely to be encountered outside the busiest summer weeks.

Allow around thirty minutes to explore both chambers, though many visitors extend their walk south-west along the coast path towards Bant's Carn and Halangy Down Ancient Village, linking several of St Mary's finest prehistoric sites into a single, longer coastal walk. There are no facilities at Innisidgen itself; Hugh Town, around two miles away, has the island's main shops, cafes and the Isles of Scilly Museum.

History

The Innisidgen chambers belong to a distinctive class of Bronze Age monument, the entrance grave, found almost exclusively on the Isles of Scilly and, in smaller numbers, on Cornwall's Penwith peninsula, with related tomb types known from the Channel Islands and Brittany. Dating broadly to the period 2500 to 800 BC, these tombs follow a consistent architectural pattern: a roughly circular mound of heaped rubble and earth, retained by a stone kerb, built over a rectangular chamber lined with edge-set slabs and roofed with substantial granite capstones, the whole structure typically sited on raised, prominent ground.

Excavation of comparable entrance graves elsewhere on Scilly has demonstrated that these tombs served as genuine burial places, containing cremated human remains and funerary urns, in some cases representing a striking number of individuals. At Knackyboy Carn on the nearby island of St Martin's, excavation recovered the cremated remains of at least sixty people, evidence that entrance graves were often used repeatedly over long periods rather than built for a single burial. Archaeologists believe their function likely extended beyond simple interment, serving also as territorial markers asserting the claims of the founding kin groups over the surrounding farmed land, and as sites where subsequent offerings continued to be made by later generations.

The Upper Innisidgen chamber, sometimes referred to as Innisidgen Carn, is recognised as one of the best-preserved entrance graves anywhere on the Isles of Scilly. Its mound, standing around 6 feet high and measuring roughly 30 by 26 feet, retains a kerb rising nearly 3 feet on its northern side, while an eastern entrance passage, covered by a single massive slab, leads into a rectangular chamber some 15 feet long and 5 feet high, itself roofed by four further capstones, a genuinely substantial piece of prehistoric construction that has survived remarkably intact across some four thousand years.

The Lower Chamber, around 300 feet to the north-west, illustrates a very different fate. Considerably more ruined than its neighbour, it retains only two of its original capstones, with sections of its kerb surviving and its mound partly incorporating natural rock outcrops into its structure, its entrance facing south rather than east. A prehistoric field system of low earth and rubble banks adjoins the slope immediately to the north of the Lower Chamber, a reminder that these funerary monuments were built within, and remained closely connected to, the working farmed landscape of Bronze Age Scilly. Today both chambers are cared for by English Heritage, standing together as a particularly instructive pairing of well-preserved and more ruined examples of the same distinctive Scillonian tomb type.

Important Features

• The Upper Chamber: one of the best-preserved entrance graves on the Isles of Scilly, with kerb, passage and capstones intact.
• The Lower Chamber: a more ruined entrance grave 300 feet away, retaining two capstones and part of its kerb.
• The stone kerbs: surviving retaining walls that once defined the outer edge of each burial mound.
• The entrance passages: low stone-lined approaches leading into each chamber, oriented in different directions.
• Adjoining field system: traces of prehistoric farming banks on the slope north of the Lower Chamber.
• Coastal setting: sweeping sea views from the path linking Innisidgen to Bant's Carn and Halangy Down.

Visitor Information

Things to Do Nearby

Frequently Asked Questions

Official English Heritage Site

For the latest access information, events and any temporary restrictions, check the official English Heritage page for the Innisidgen Burial Chambers before you travel.

Visit the official English Heritage website